Peat and repeat were in a boat...

What is peat, anyway? Peat is decayed moss and other plants that accumulate over time (centuries to millenia) in Irish bogs (Not just in Ireland, but the subject of this blog post is our trip to Ireland, so...).

This organic muck (a.k.a turf) is dug out of the bog, traditionally with a special shovel. The picture above shows some dug by tractor.

The peat is dried and then stacked, first in small piles to finish drying, then in larger stacks for storage.

The dried turf is then burned like firewood in fireplaces, etc. It has a distinctive smell - kind of like pipe tobacco but less sweet, more spicy. We frequently caught a whiff on the breeze during our hikes and drives through the countryside.

And, like many other surprising items, you can buy Irish peat on the internet. I now have two small bags of peat chunks for use in barbecuing. It smells just like I remember. Some of you may have the chance to share the experience at our next cookout.

As is often the case, peat smoke is now the "smell of Ireland" in my mind. The scent takes me back to our trip. I can't wait to smell it again!

Let's paint the house...

People who know me would probably say I have a pretty conservative style when it comes to color. (If I even have any style at all :-) But I really loved the way Irish houses, especially in the towns made use of many and various hues. The houses in Ireland are almost all of stone or concrete covered with "plaster"... what we would call stucco. Then they're painted in almost any color. These 4 photos from Timoleague (top), Kenmare (top middle), Waterville (bottom middle), and Sneem (bottom) give a sample.

To me, somehow, the contrasting (more polite than 'clashing') colors made the towns and villages more vibrant and alive.

Too bad we have vinyl siding...

Fascinating...

This really amazed me. Many of the toilets we saw in Ireland were a bit more primitive than US toilets. But not this one:

Notice the dual controls on the wall: one big button and one little button. Each one produced a different flushing level, depending on your "business." Truly the cutting edge.

Maybe I'll be a monk when I grow up...

One of my favorite parts of our Ireland trip was the day we visited Timoleague Abbey. it's a ruined abbey originally inhabited by monks in the 1100's. The setting is really beautiful: on the edge of a long narrow arm of the sea in a quaint little town. All that's left is the stone walls and a variety of grave markers of varying ages. It appears that the grounds and interior of the abbey are still used as cemetery space, and have been for quite some time. Many of the rooms were marked with stone plaques to indicate how they fit into monkly life.

I was profoundly struck by the historical place of the church and our connection to that history. Sometime, almost a thousand years ago, a few monks and probably many local villagers, who were scraping a pretty hard living out of the land and sea, made a considerable investment in time and materials to build a church and associated buildings, which survive (mostly) today. They were people very much like us (though with much less stuff), who put aside their daily struggles for sustenance, security, and comfort to gather and praise, worship, and pray to the same God we know today.

I know Mike Hsu is big on our connection to the historical church, but somehow it became more real to me to put my hands on stones laid by ancient monks, look out the windows they did, and worship their God in that place. I've never had much desire to visit Israel but after my experience in Ireland, I think I may be reconsidering.

Oh... and of course we took many pictures. Here are a few.

Do the Irish really know their beer?

Back from Ireland and back to blogging after a long absence... We had a great time in Ireland. Among other things, we sampled a variety of wonderful local beverages. These included Guinness (of course), Murphy's Stout, Beamish Stout (my personal favorite), Bulmer's Cider (on tap in most Irish pubs), and Smithwick's Irish Ale (pronounced 'smitix'). All are very good beers (or cider). All are even better when drunk in an authentic Irish pub - by which I mean a pub in Ireland.

Heineken was also very popular among the locals, but we didn't drink any.

There was one other beer that we did NOT try during our visit to Ireland. It was available on tap in every pub we visited. It was apparently very popular - we saw lots of people drinking it. It was also more expensive than any of the beers mentioned above. Generally these would all be signs of quality that might entice me to try a beer. However, in this case, I was not enticed to try the Budweiser.

Goes to show that any beer is appreciated more when imported, I guess.

In a loosely related photo, here's Gina examining a strange artifact during one of our hikes. We first thought is was some kind of primitive bronze age tool. Turned out to be a primitive aluminum age Budweiser can.

Even in the dead of winter...

Even in the dead of winter, you can usually find some color if you look carefully. These are berries from Japenese Bittersweet - a vine that grows wild in NJ.

Chilly-Willy...

While we were back home in NJ this month, there was some freezing rain. Not too convenient for our travel plans - flights there and back were both cancelled and had to be re-booked. However, made for some good photos.